TY - CHAP

T1 - Learning opportunities for length estimation in textbooks – a systematic analysis of German elementary school textbooks

AU - Hoth, Jessica

AU - Huang, Hsing-Mei Edith

AU - Schuy, Melanie

AU - Holland, Riccarda

AU - Heinze, Aiso

AU - Ruwisch, Silke

N1 - © Charles University, Faculty of Education, Prague, 2025

PY - 2025

Y1 - 2025

N2 - Estimating lengths is an important skill for coping with many everyday situations and therefore a goal of math lessons is for children to estimate as accurately as possible. In order to achieve this goal, learning opportunities should be chosen for the mathematics classroom that develop the length estimation competence as fully as possible. The article aims at (a) analyzing the extent to which German textbooks for elementary school cover the different characteristics of estimation tasks and (b) how the share of tasks matches students’ competence profiles. Four German textbook series are analyzed in regard of the task characteristics. It shows that some tasks are underrepresented (such as estimating the length of objects that are not physically present). In a second analysis, the results from the textbook analysis are compared with the competence profiles of 450 German third and fourth grade students. It indicates that some distributions of task characteristics match the students’ competence profiles (e.g. the majority of tasks holds physically present objects and the German students estimate the lengths of physically present objects significantly more accurate than objects that are not physically present) while there is a mismatch for other characteristics.

AB - Estimating lengths is an important skill for coping with many everyday situations and therefore a goal of math lessons is for children to estimate as accurately as possible. In order to achieve this goal, learning opportunities should be chosen for the mathematics classroom that develop the length estimation competence as fully as possible. The article aims at (a) analyzing the extent to which German textbooks for elementary school cover the different characteristics of estimation tasks and (b) how the share of tasks matches students’ competence profiles. Four German textbook series are analyzed in regard of the task characteristics. It shows that some tasks are underrepresented (such as estimating the length of objects that are not physically present). In a second analysis, the results from the textbook analysis are compared with the competence profiles of 450 German third and fourth grade students. It indicates that some distributions of task characteristics match the students’ competence profiles (e.g. the majority of tasks holds physically present objects and the German students estimate the lengths of physically present objects significantly more accurate than objects that are not physically present) while there is a mismatch for other characteristics.

KW - Didactics of Mathematics

KW - Elementary school

KW - length estimation competence

KW - task characteristics

M3 - Article in conference proceedings

SP - 189

EP - 199

BT - International Symposium Elementary Mathematics Teaching

A2 - Novotná, Jarmila

A2 - Moraová, Hana

PB - Charles University, Faculty of Education, Prague

CY - Prague

T2 - International Symposium Elementary Mathematics Teaching SEMT '25

Y2 - 17 August 2025 through 21 August 2025

ER -